Ten injured – two seriously – as gas blast destroys houses
Explosion in seaside resort leaves ten victims injured
RESIDENTS in a seaside resort have expressed “amazement” that no-one died in a suspected gas explosion which destroyed two houses and left ten people injured.
Cloes Lane, a quiet street in the Essex town of Clacton, was turned into a scene of “chaos” yesterday morning after a blast with the power of a “bomb going off” reduced two semidetached properties to a smouldering pile of rubble and damaged several others.
One man, believed to be in his 70s, last night remained in a life-threatening condition after the explosion at around 8:30am while a woman, thought to be in her fifties, suffered severe burns.
Eight others were treated in hospital for injuries including burns and broken ribs, four of them being released from hospital later.
Firefighters believe a domestic gas fault is likely to have caused the explosion, which left the walking wounded stumbling through bricks, wood, loft insulation and other debris strewn across the street.
Shocked neighbours, who rifled through masonry to pull survivors free and tend to the injured, said they were surprised the blast had not claimed any casualties, with one man telling how he thought he “would just be pulling bodies” out of the rubble.
Other residents recalled how their houses shook while they were sitting having breakfast, while some said they felt their heart doing “flips” after returning home to find the scene of devastation.
One of the first on the scene, Darren Bond, was about to take his eight-year-old daughter to school.
The plasterer described hearing a “huge bang” like a “truck crashing into a house”. After making sure his wife and daughter stayed inside, he went out to find a scene of “total devastation”.
“One of the houses opposite had just disappeared and the other was only half there,” the 34-year-old said. “It was clear there had been a huge explosion.
“I rushed over and could hear people shouting. We found a man and a woman trapped inside the remains of the house that had collapsed, we pulled away bricks and timber to get them out and made them as comfortable as we could.
“The family in the next door house couldn’t get out because the blast had knocked in their door so we helped them out of a window.”
He added: “I did think that there might be another explosion but we knew we had to get those people out of the rubble and debris as fast as possible.”
Wayne Reekie, 32, who also helped rescue some of those trapped in the rubble, described the events as “chaos,” with “nothing left” of one house.
He said: “There were two people trapped, and a couple of dogs, which I got out. I just wanted to help people, just get people out. There was a lady who was severely burned, we got her to an ambulance and kept her warm.
“A mattress was on top of the man – it looked like he was still in bed. The woman was screaming in pain, she wanted to be with her husband.”
The father-of five added “We cleared the rubble from on top of her and pulled her free as the firefighters arrived. It was amaz- ing that people survived the blast. I thought we would just be pulling bodies out of there.”
Gail Chapman, 67, who lives opposite one of the houses that was turned to rubble, said the force of the explosion felt like “a train hitting the house”.
The windows of the her prop- erty were shattered in the incident and her roof was damaged. The roof of her garden shed, located around 100 feet away, was torn clean off.
She recalled: “We were sitting there and all the glass came in, the roof fell on the car, light fittings broke.”